Dramaworld - Episodes 7 & 8 (A Recap)

JoAnne: Justin Chon continues to be our favorite thing about Dramaworld, and we here at PotUp would like to support his career. Thus, we present to you some of his other work, and ask that you support his sincere efforts as well. Hwaiting, Justin! BgA - Dong Saya Dae (똥싸야돼) M/V

kakashi: Awwwwwww, look at his hair! Much better than all the Eurovision hair I had to see yesterday. And the MV?! Hilarious. This is gold! And already more than 2mio hits?

Shuk: He was the character I most loved (except Siwon's adorable cameo). Best recurring character? Who cares? [thumbs up]

Cookie: I haven't seen it yet but I've heard its hilarious. I still walk around cackling at the little sister part.

Episode 7

We're not kidding...Seth really is the best thing about Dramaworld. So from now on (not that 'on' lasts for much longer...) we're all about Seth here. Or mostly. We're mostly about Seth here.
Seth! 
[stealing Trot's "PA Kang" sign and changing it to "Seth"]
What about the others! erm... flower boy? He deserves some blog space no? 

Time to collect Seo Yeon back from the Flower Boy. Goodbye, Flower Boy. I hope we see you again. Here or elsewhere. (Pssst... elsewhere! Pick a good drama! Follow Justin, he seems like he might be going places!)
What, is this the last of flower boy that we will see? Booooooo. I will follow Justin willingly, but I also constantly think "wow, is he really almost 35?"
I'm not ever going to be fond of the bangs-over-the-forehead look. But he is the perfect second lead: quiet, unassuming, and the person she runs to when she needs support. Seth below kind of looks like a used car salesman, but he is showing more of his smarmy side now.

Okay, that's not Seth's body... but hey, props to Joon Park, though. Although - where's your towel? Everyone knows if you go in the shower strictly to brood, question your life decisions, and pine over a girl, you're supposed to wear a towel.

It's just hanging low. Also, I had the order to "only put Seth pictures into the post", but! I could not pass by this body. I mean ... his acting may be way off but I give him full marks for the work on his body. Also: please note, Claire isn't dead.
It was a well-sculpted scene.
😂 I actually missed that coz the histronics were boring me. Good job Sean! You know where else visible muscles might be nice? Moving on your face when you smile. (I think the botox is wearing off...also...I can never meet him in real life now coz I'll feel guilty....and be staring at his forehead too hard.)

I kind of like this upgraded Seth. What shall we call him? Neutral Seth? He's not the original cutie pie good guy we thought he was, but he's not dressed in leather pushing people off rooftops, either. Nope, he's a man with a plan now: redecorate the restaurant, bring back Seo Yeon as his chef, and (eventually) make sweet, sweet, Dramaland love with her, the kind that involves no actual skinship and produces fully dressed six-month old babies from the virgin mother's womb.
Let's call him "upgraded Seth".
Yes.
Nobody else getting "off his rocker Seth" vibes? Dude is in namja mode but he's also showing a little crazy around the eyes.

So boring. Who cares. Mama Park has the whiniest voice, plus she was perfectly fine with the idea that her husband would kill himself as a means of ensuring that Joon took over running their frozen food empire. Excuse me, what kind of crazy pills are you taking? Too much time sitting under the hairball lamps fried her brain.
Yes, but I was really impressed with the building. Look! 
All I heard was "mwhau mwhau mwhau" like a Charlie Brown cartoon.

I'm with Claire on this - Joon's idea to turn that nice little bistro into a karaoke palace is a bit bizarre.
I get a feeling he is, in general, a bit unhinged, our Upgraded Seth. 
He's still following the rules, even as he breaks them. "There can be no relationship until you drunken sing together at least once."
He's totally going to use it for a proposal moment or something. Some thing creepy but sweet...right? 

Is she really just now understanding that Seth's ultimate goal is Seo Yeon? I think so. She's even more dumb than we thought.
Does she really get it? I don't think so. In this and the next episode, she asks herself and Seth a gazillion questions. Or rather ... the same question over and over in variations. It's: "who benefits the most from all this?" - "who is it that would really benefit a lot?" -  "A lot benefits who?" etc. 
I was amused by the makeover, though. That was a bit of well-done fluff.
I was feeling a bit 'meh' about it, actually.
I was initially tickled by the continuous PPL but the end product was...well, much like the entire series, it left a mild taste in my mouth. Like when you take a strawberry flavored sweet but it really just tastes like generic factory flavor.

Awww, someone has feelings... and dumps Ga In. Take THAT, Bitchy Second Lead! (Sorry, but that's always a satisfying moment in a drama, whether it's a good one or a bad one doesn't matter.)
If Seth doesn't push him off a building, I will. I really don't like him. It's his weird face.
One of Joon/Sean's eyes always seems to more lidded than the other. It kind of distracts me. And her expression never changes. Botox? And I can't imagine assuming marriage under so much NO-age. I mean, okay she and JoonMom are sharing the same heart, but short of a Stepford Wife shot or handcuffs, how do you drag a restaurateur to the altar? Although it is a drama...sort of.
I think the blankness (on her part) is more of a cold calculation coz her forehead has wrinkled a bit) 

Upgraded Seth and Seo Yeon do sort of make a cute couple, although she looks about 15.
Yes, they're cute. Go make babies!

I don't even remember. It couldn't have been very important. They probably threatened each other a little. I do remember more earthquake-y rumbling, sort of in response to one of them saying something. Maybe at the end of the show, Dramaworld cracks open and swallows one of them up. I know who I'm hoping it will be.
Yes, doomy earthquakes. But no threatening. Claire does not suspect a thing. She is saying: "Who could benefit from this the most?" - "Benefit who could the most from?" etc. And then, he gets a phone call and runs off.
At least this earthquake included a shaking soju bottle. Most of these seem to be camera shakes.
I liked watching to see the 3 sec delay between camera shake and character reaction. 

Awww, did BSL not get what she wanted? Is she threatening Evil Seth? Do we care, even the tiniest little bitty bit?
Nope. Mooooove on.
She's: "You promised I could be with Park Joon! You would get the cook, I would get Mr. Frozen! Give me what you promised!"
*sigh* I watched this scene with sadness because 1. it was on a roof 2. she was whining about things not going her way and 3. Seth is a crazy mofo...could she not sense what was about to happen? it's like co-conspirator rule #3

She's drunk, he shows up. She pulls his face in really weird directions, which is hilarious.
Oh wait, is her make-over in this episode? That was funny too, she says: "thank god for product placement". Okay, it wasn't very funny, but a bit funny.
That was before the karaoke buildout. So who would benefit from PPL...?

It sort of looks like they reached an agreement, huh? I bet that doesn't bode well for anyone.
They're still arguing over who gets what. Or maybe they're about to kiss, I forgot.

Drunk Claire confessed to Joon Park that she set a teeny fire in his restaurant so that she could get Seo Yeon and him back together. He flies into a rage, shout confesses that he almost loved her, then storms off. Claire goes after him and... yes. This. I sort of think that there are other facilitators out there that we cannot see, and they do stuff like this to make us laugh. (side note: it just occurred to me that they should have given us glimpses of the actual crew adjusting things or setting up scenes, but made it look accidental.)
She is surprised he didn't catch her. Cause that's supposed to be a law here, remember? I hate him so much, can we please push him off?
The KDrama version of dropping your hankie. I guess it doesn't always work for a Facilitator.
Okay THAT bit made me laugh, yes. I'm glad you remembered it!

Remember how it looked like they worked out another plan? Yep. Nope. Ga In is gone, bye-bye.
Push em, push em! 
(Or is she? Claire came back, and we never saw how she managed to climb back onto the roof after falling over the edge...)
Right, thanks for bringing that up. So ... in the beginning of this episode, Claire just .... climbs back up. That's HOW LAME this show is!
Sparkle Biatch Go Bye-Bye!

Episode 8

I think that this entire episode is meta for filler, but that might be giving it too much credit. Who could not come up with enough story for ten 15 minute episodes?

Upgraded Seth looks good in that suit, and he's very handsome in profile. He's just a happy, happy man getting ready in the mornings (and makes his and Seo In's portrait kiss, haha), now that his plan is underway. Which makes me wonder - what did he think when Claire showed up at first? He was already making moves back then, so she had to have been a disruption.
Don't ask the writers hard questions, they might start to cry. 
LOL. Since he was aware of her from the get-go, and her pic was part of his Conspiracy Wall, I'm guessing he picked her. Maybe he Googled "Best Person To Bungle A KDrama Wet Dream"?

I mean...I'm never going to be unhappy when Yang Dong Geun shows up, whether he's rapping or acting. But WT everloving F, show? MVs used to have a dance break in the middle of a song but...I just...the twerking in hanboks, that will live on forever.

Yeah. It's amazing, they ran out of story.

I giggled a bit, and then tried to see if they filmed it at any place I saw when I vacationed there.

Also, why does his secret lair open up on to a sageuk? Is he from a sageuk? What if Seth was never supposed to be in Dramaworld, and Dramaworld brought Claire to fix that?

Don't ask hard questions. 

I figured he somehow used his Facilitator skills to create a wormhole between a KBS saguek and an MBC idol drama. [shrug] That's all I got.

That was just... I mean... I'm betting this gave Justin and Ryan Higa the idea for their KPop group. Nobody should ever have to see twerking in hanboks. 

My takeaway here is that Claire has a really nice figure. And then musing on the coordination required to do that deep floor bow while wearing a very short dress. I think they should have really gone big with the flowers, though. That altar is pitiful.
They spent their whole budget on the sageuk rap.
I thought so, too. If she's some sort of Chaebol Heiress Marriage Alliance creature, she should have more flowers and a fancier funeral than the childless halmeoni of a p'macha tent.

I see dead people! I guess since we're staring at the restaurant name it's a good place to mention that I've always gotten a kick out of it, because KDramas in general and Joon Park in particular are SO buttoned up...but a libertine is so not. (quick poll: who saw the Johnny Depp movie of the same name?)
I haven't!
Not me.
Y'all are missing out. I saw it in a theater with some girlfriends..there were grandmas in the row ahead of us. Clearly none of us read much about it before we went. At one point I was so shocked I blurted out 'Is that dwarf riding a huge PENIS?' and all the grandmas started laughing. After that it was okay.

Rather than go to the service for Ga In, Joon holds his own, private memorial for his father and Ga In, behind the restaurant. It's probably the cleanest 'behind the restaurant' area I've ever seen, but it's still a strange impulse, Joon.
It's actually just PPL. The restaurant is one of the sponsors. It's in Missouri. Yes, I googled.
1. It was the back?! I thought it was the roof. Didn't she have to climb stairs? 
2. They shot in Missouri??!

Seth seizes the opportunity of Joon's absence to make himself look really good and Joon look really suspicious. Which is just the smart thing to do, right? On another note, can anyone tell me why there are so many empty shelves standing around?

Maybe they filmed in an empty warehouse for shelves.

That was the location of their plot. "99 story lines left on the shelf. 99 story lines. You take one down, pass it around, 98 story lines left on the shelf..."

Space for all the flowers they planned but couldn't buy coz went over budget? This was actually shot in an urn storage room and they couldn't take out the shelves coz they are nailed to the floor...coz earthquakes. Can I get my own show now? 

Seth's plan was successful, because the Idiot is now convinced that Joon murdered his father and Ga In both. She hustles off to confront him, they argue, throw all kinds of food at each other (so wasteful!!!!) and she searches around the place, conveniently finding a full head of napa cabbage kimchi with which to slap Joon. Everyone always talks about the kimchi slap, but I've honestly never seen one in a drama.
Well, aren't you grateful to this great show for showing it to you?! What a scene!!!!! Not.  
She doesn't even make sense. But, then again, neither does most of this, neh?
The kimchi slap happened once (tho some dramas have referenced it). It was just such a blatant "we must include this meta moment" though. I mean, digging through the trash? The restaurant doesn't even serve Korean Food!!!

Oh dear, Seth, it seems Seo Yeon has quite clearly friend-zoned you. What will you do now?
It's not okay. I would push her off the roof, Seth.
Drama Death Reboot! He can always try again.
He can't, if lead dies dramaworld can't come back. And at this point I don't see the harm in that.

The two drunk idiots work out their issues. Joon convinces Claire that he's not a murderer, anyway. They still have issues. So many issues. Too many.
I was kinda glad we didn't see them kiss.
The more I watch Joon, the more I'm convinced his upper lip is frozen or something. Maybe it's his face has some neurological deficit? Even his almost-confession is odd-looking.

The final scene, Claire decides to let Joon watch all 15 previous episodes of "Taste Of Love and break the Characters Must Not Know rule. Are you planning to burn out his brain cells to match yours? Who would benefit from that, Claire, huh?

Comments

The longer this goes on the more ways I can think of that it could have been hilariously awesome from start to finish, rather than just occasionally funny. That makes me sad. Plus I feel a little bad because maybe I was expecting too much, and this isn't terrible itself, just parodying a terrible drama - like, Taste of Love is the drama within the drama, but what's happening with Joon et al is ALSO a drama, and somehow inside the drama that is the one we are watching. Like, they just need to zoom out a bit and we'll see it.
I was expecting nothing and can tell you, it's really, really stupid. I don't think there is anything beyond what we're seeing, which is empty and a waste of film and money. It makes me angry. All in all, this will be like a feature film in length, but seriously .... try harder next time.
Eh, I don't believe it's either drama gold or a complete failure. But, yes, there were other ways this could have been taken. Overall, though, it's still just 2 1/2 hours out of many that I have wasted on worse fare than this.
I have to agree with everybody and I just think that if the creaters were true fans (not just watchers but fans who dig deeper and appreciate story and production value and acting) and then actually handed the story over to a professional writer for pacing and word choice and forked over the money for an acting coach at least. I dunno. 
It's certainly ridiculous enough to be an SBS drama, I've watched an episode or two with as thin a story line... maybe it got so meta it out meta's itself?